Exporting to the United Kingdom. The costliest rule is on the label.

With the United Kingdom, the talk is always about customs and checks. The rule that really changes the sums is one line of address on the pack.

This guide covers food in general. For two products the route changes before the country even comes into it: wine travels with excise duty and its accompanying document, and olive oil has marketing and labelling rules all of its own. If you export either to the UK, read this guide and the one for your product. For wine, the market detail is in wine in the United Kingdom and its duty.

This piece is part of the guide to export operations for small food producers. If you're looking for an EUR.1 for a UK shipment, the answer is that it doesn't exist in this relationship: why is explained in EUR.1 or certificate of origin.

The template, to download

Twelve rows, in the order problems come up: the risk category and composite products first, then the label with the UK address, health documents, the safety declaration, origin without an EUR.1, and the shipment. Each row gives the GOV.UK page to reopen. At the bottom, five cells for the details that decide everything: risk category, composite product, address on the label, REX number, who submits the safety declaration.

File	Contents	Link
United KingdomExcel, one sheet	Twelve rows with sources, a Status column with a drop-down, and the five cells with the details that decide the rest.	regno-unito-checklist-post-brexit-en.xlsx

The files are free. There's no form in the way, we don't ask for an email address, and we don't get notified when anyone downloads them. The sheet only covers what was in force when we read the sources on 6 September 2026, with no future deadlines: the UK's timetable for import checks has been rewritten more than once.

The UK address on the label

It's the most expensive obligation, because it affects printing, not paperwork. Until 31 December 2023, a product sold in Great Britain could carry an EU, UK or Northern Ireland address. Since 1 January 2024 that option has closed: you need a UK address.

For an Italian producer the consequence is straightforward: without a UK base, your importer's address goes on the label. Which means the label for Great Britain is tied to that buyer, and changing buyer means reprinting.

It's also why a UK supply agreement needs to be discussed alongside the artwork, not afterwards. GOV.UK specifies that it must be a physical address where the business can be contacted by post, and that an email address or phone number can't be used.

A UK label carries the name of the business that imports your goods. As long as that agreement holds, so does the printed batch.

The safety and security declaration, since 31 January 2025

Since 31 January 2025, all goods imported from the European Union into Great Britain must be covered by a safety and security declaration, the entry summary declaration, submitted in advance on the S&S GB platform. The dataset was reduced on that very date: twenty mandatory fields, eight conditional, nine optional.

Legal responsibility lies with the carrier moving the goods across the UK border. In practice the carrier often asks the importer, or someone else in the chain, to submit it on their behalf: it's worth knowing in advance who will do it for your shipments, because a missing declaration stops the load.

Pre-notification and certificate: two different things

IPAFFS pre-notification and the health certificate get mixed up because they come together, but they're separate obligations handled by different parties. The UK importer submits the pre-notification; the authority in the country of departure, meaning your ASL, issues the certificate.

Obligation	Who does it, and when	When to use it
IPAFFS pre-notificationimport notification	The UK importer submits it, at least one working day before arrival at the point of entry. It can be submitted up to thirty days ahead.	For products of animal origin and high-risk food and feed not of animal origin.
Health certificateexport health certificate	The authority in the country of departure signs it. GOV.UK says that “medium risk imports need a health certificate”, and that it must be issued in the country where the product was last exported from, processed or inspected.	For goods classed as medium risk. For low-risk goods you need a commercial document, and no certificate.
Safety and security declarationentry summary declaration	Legal responsibility of the carrier, submitted in advance on the S&S GB platform.	For all goods imported from the European Union into Great Britain since 31 January 2025.

There's just one practical question to ask the buyer on day one: which risk category does our product fall into? Everything else follows from the answer, and asking after you've agreed a delivery date means finding out too late that you needed three weeks.

Composite products, where people get lost

The category that causes most uncertainty is composite products, which GOV.UK defines as products containing processed animal products and plant products that are both integral to the product, with the example of a lasagne made with minced meat, tomato sauce and wheat pasta.

Many Italian products land here without anyone noticing: a sauce with a small percentage of cheese, a preserve with butter, a filling with eggs. The customs and health treatment differs from a purely plant-based product, and you need to check it against the recipe, not the commercial category.

Preferential duty is claimed a different way

Between the European Union and the United Kingdom, the EUR.1 isn't used. Preference is claimed with an origin declaration made by the exporter, or on the basis of the importer's knowledge. For shipments above €6,000, the EU exporter must give their REX number.

If you don't know this, you ship without a declaration, the buyer pays full duty, and your second offer starts at a disadvantage against a competitor who does write that line. It's a mistake that doesn't cause a hold-up, which is why it goes unnoticed for months.

The dates, and why we give them with the date we checked

The UK's timetable for import checks has been rewritten several times since 2021, with delays announced and then moved again. So instead of listing future deadlines, this page only reports what is already in force, with the date the source was read.

The GOV.UK pages cited were opened on 6 September 2026. The guidance on importing animal products shows a last update of 22 April 2025; the labelling guidance, 20 September 2022. Before printing a batch or signing a supply deal, reopen them: this is exactly the kind of subject where a page from six months ago may already be out of date.

When nobody can keep the deadlines in their head any more

You can run one market from memory. The UK plus another non-EU country, with different dates, different documents and a label that depends on the buyer, you can't: at that point what gets lost isn't a rule, it's a date.

That's when deadlines need to come out of people's memory and into a place that watches them by itself, with operational deadline alerts. With one rule that matters more than the technology, set out in Ethics: the system prepares and flags, but no document goes out until a person has read and approved it.

Questions and answers